Thursday, 21 August 2014

Horror Cheesy, Classic & Decadent & Debauched

Listening to one of the best movie soundtracks ever … Queen Of The Damned, made me think about my first movie love, horror :)

Queen Of The Damned is, natch, the movie adaptation of the Anne Rice novel. It got one hell of a bad rap when it came out and was filmed, lord love us all, in Melbourne. Exotic? Ha! I do like Stuart Townsend in it as Lestat and even though he’s not a Lestat I or anyone else could EVER have imagined, whatever he’s doing is working, it has Aaliyah in it and Vincent Perez and … hell, it’s just cheesy fun.

Cheesy fun is also a good pretty description of the old English Hammer horror vampire flicks, usually set in Regency Wherever.

If you want to try one, see if you can catch The Vampire Lovers. It’s an adaptation of an old Sheridan le Fanu story Carmilla and is a gas. A sexy lesbian vampire works her way through the local population of virginal young ladies. Naturally, she has to be staked at the very end.

Talk about Freudian.

And to more serious horror flicks … mmm, Dario Argento for the ick factor has to win. Suspiria, anyone? You cannot say you love horror movies if you haven’t caught at least one Argento flick.

More classically, Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, Halloween. I’ll even throw in John Carpenter’s The Thing.

The last horror movie that really truly stayed with me was the vampire film Let The Right One In, a Swedish film of an amazing book by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It’s like no other horror movie I can think of. Nothing pretty, nothing beautiful, it’s ugly, dingy and has a fresh quiet horror of its own variety in the ending. There is a great American adaptation of it, but truly, stick with the original one.

And if you can find it, Lars Von Trier’s The Kingdom TV series. It is just so damned weird and wonderful. It also stars the hospital from hell!

Okay, last but not least, in no particular order, Alien (sci-fi horror), Chronos (Mexican vampire horror), Constantine… not really horror but I loved it.

I’ve left out so many fabulous films, so bad they’re good and some just plain fabulous, but there you go. My short list of recs. Watch at your peril.

And so, right now … a vampire movie I really, really want to see that’s been out since earlier this year, Only Lovers Left Alive, directed by Jim Jarmusch with Tom Hiddleston (Loki!) and the excellent Tilda Swinton (who was the BEST androgynous angel in Constantine). Peak at the trailer, oh, and um… Is that a blood popsicle she's clutching? Carmilla didn't have the only phallic reference in this post: